Rev Charles Andrews
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – If you don’t know who Rev. Charles Andrews is, you should.
He was Mahatma Ghandi’s closest confidante.
Reverend Andrews was appalled at the living conditions and the exploitation of workers in India, which was then a British colony. He recruited Ghandi to come from South Africa, where he was already involved in non-violent civil disobedience.
When Ghandi was jailed, Andrews coordinated with his supporters. It was Andrews who smuggled Ghandi’s letters to the newspapers. Andrews was the intermediary between Ghandi and British colonial leaders who eventually negotiated independence for India and Pakistan.
Rev. Andrews witnessed remarkable, improbable success in the cause to which he dedicated his life.
But Gandhi thought it was critically important that Indians lead their own independence movement. One of Brittan’s arguments for keeping its colonies was that they maintained order among savages. And Rev. Andrew’s presence played into that argument.
So Gandhi asked Reverend Charles Andrews to leave. And he did.
Reverend Andrews left India to become a missionary in Fiji and Sri Lanka.
Could you do that? At a moment of personal success and triumph… when the tide is finally turning your way, and a life-long goal seems within reach… could you leave it behind? Aren’t we motivated, at least in part, because we’ll get credit for what we do? Is there not some measure of self-indulgence in admiring our successes? Yet the great Christian hymn says ‘To God Be The Glory’.
The Reverend Charles Andrews, a lion of human rights, is mostly forgotten to history.
Chris Conley
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